Splitting Seconds
by NoInspirationForMyUsername
Summary: When a moment is frozen and spread out, you can see the different reactions. The Pride, the scream, the confusion, the anger, the feeling of failure, the surprise, the shock, the guilt, the fear and, of course, the snap. Warning: Major Character Death. T because I'm paranoid. Alternative Ending (-ish) to BoO. No spoilers.


**Splitting Seconds**

**i. The Pride**

It happened in a second, almost too fast for the human eye to see.

Almost.

Nico had good eyes, and one day, Annabeth would be thankful for that. It had saved her life, after all.

The moment Octavian had pulled out the dagger from under his toga and aimed it at Annabeth's back, Nico had less than a millisecond to think about what he had to do next.

His train of thoughts went like this:

_Octavian wants to kill Annabeth. Not good. Needs to get stopped. Too far away from me to stop him. Dagger is thrown. If dagger hits Annabeth, there will be a war. A Roman killing a Greek Leader. Can't push her out of the way. One option left. _

Really, it was amazing he even had time to think all that before he leaped forward.

When the dagger pierced through his chest, he didn't feel pain. He felt proud. Not only had he prevented a war between the Romans and the Greeks (twice, now, really, if you counted transporting the Athena Parthenos), but he had also conquered his fatal flaw. He had overcome his grudge for Annabeth.

Bianca would be proud.

The last thing he heard before he went back to his natural habitat, was a scream.

The last thing the thought was: _Hazel_.

**ii. The Scream**

It had happened so fast. One moment people were congratulating them for defeating Gaea, and the next her brother lay on the ground, dead eyes staring ahead, with a blood-red flower blooming from him.

Octavian was staring wide-eyed at the target he missed.

Annabeth pulled her own dagger and twirled around.

Jason stood there, staring at the body.

Reyna stalked over to Octavian.

Leo spontaneously combusted.

Piper fell to her knees.

Frank shifted into a wolf.

Percy pierced Octavian with his sword.

And Hazel _screamed_.

She couldn't seem to stop screaming that loud and pathetically high scream of hers, ripping through the reality of what just happened.

Octavian had killed her brother.

Her brother was dead.

_NO!_ everything inside her yelled _NO, NO, NO! Not my brother, please, not my brother, he's the only one I have left, he saved me, he's my only family, please, please, PLEASE NO!_

She wasn't sure if she said it out loud.

(This must've been what Nico felt like when Bianca had died.)

**iii. The Confusion**

Jason honestly, _honestly_, didn't know what to think. He wanted to be sad, proud, furious, ashamed, relieved and shocked at the same time.

He wanted to be sad because a friend had just died. He wanted to be proud because said friend had saved his crush's girlfriend, and stopped a war at the same time. He wanted to be furious because _How DARE that motherfucking Augur kill Nico he was ten times the man you'll ever be you sunofabitch. _He wanted to be ashamed because he was from the same race as the murderer. He wanted to be relieved because he knew Nico would go to Elysium now, maybe even try for rebirth. He wanted to be shocked because he had never, _ever_ thought Octavian to be a murderer. A slimy, backstabbing (_oh, the irony_) prat, sure, but not a freaking _murderer_.

He also had this insane urge to laugh. Jupiter knows why.

The one thing he wasn't was surprised. Because he couldn't help but think of that line in the prophecy.

_An oath to keep with a final breath._

"_I'm going to honor my promise. I'll take you to Epirus. I'll help you close the Doors of Death. Then that's it. I'm leaving – forever."_

Well, he certainly made good on that promise.

**iv. The Anger**

There was a reason his current form was a wolf. That reason was an Augur going by the name of Octavian. Or rather, the boy he murdered.

Frank never thought he could've been this angry. No, furious. Ah, who was he kidding, no words did justice to the feelings he was harboring. How do you describe the feeling of pure, animalistic _hatred_ that coursed through his body, eating at his skin, and dripping free from his mouth in the form of drool.

Octavian had tried to kill Annabeth, the one who was always kind to him, never made fun of him, and was more then capable of standing her own in a fair fight.

Octavian had actually killed Nico di Angelo, who just so happened to be his girlfriend's brother.

And Jupiter knew he would not let him get away with it.

Within a moment's notice, he had changed himself into a wolf, ready to tear that weasel apart.

Percy beat him to it.

**v. The Failure**

When travelling with the Athena Parthenos, there hadn't been much moments in which Reyna, Hedge and Nico could bond. And really, there hadn't needed to be. The instances where the coach was yelling at monsters while doing karate kicks, with Reyna being the one actually fighting them of while Nico rested, had been the best bonding exercises one could wish for. Reyna had learned to trust coach Hedge and Nico to have her back, and they trusted her to have theirs.

It was ironic that the actual danger had come from the front.

When Reyna heard a scream, she had just managed to whip her head around fast enough so that she saw the dagger digging into Nico's heart. Her legs had been moving before she realized it.

'_I'm going to sleep. You'll protect me, right?'_

'_Sure, go ahead. We'll need you tomorrow.'_

The painful feeling of _failure, failure, failure_ exploded in her chest.

**vi. The Surprise**

Leo, to say the very least, was not a big fan of Nico di Angelo. Sure, he was Hazel's brother and got bonus points for that, but the rest of him crept Leo the fuck out. The guy was shady, broody, and just about as anti-social as they get. That the aura of death surrounded him didn't help one bit.

If Leo was being completely honest – like, completely fucking honest – he had thought Nico would have a hard time getting into Elysium.

Now, the Fates were screaming _LOL, NOOB! YOU'RE WRONG!_

As it turns out, Nico was only one jump away from Elysium.

And oh, how he regretted ever doubting him.

**vii. The Shock**

Piper had been watching as the dagger hit Nico's heart, shattering hers to pieces.

_No,_ she thought _No, this can't be true._

Her vision clouded and formed a tunnel, until only Nico's corpse could be seen.

Her knees buckled and her mind went completely blank.

**viii. The Guilt**

Annabeth had felt a body fall against hers. Immediately, she grabbed her dagger and turned around.

She hadn't realized it was already too late.

The first things she saw were the eyes of Octavian, staring into hers as if he was a scared rabbit.

Then she looked down and saw the cause of Hazel's scream.

Nico's body was lying at her feet, a dagger sticking into his chest, blood soaking his clothes. Eyes staring lifelessly in front of him, straight into hers.

A rabbit and a fish.

Suddenly, immense guilt overwhelmed her.

There had been rumors going through camp that Nico had a crush on her. While almost every person with a brain could see it was anything but (sometimes she swore he hated her), this would only make the rumor mill turn harder.

Then she felt guilty for thinking of that for thinking it right after the boy died for her.

And then she felt even more guilty.

_He had died for her._

She could see the logical reasons for doing it (_If Octavian had killed her, another Greek-Roman War would've start, because killing a Leader is a no-no. While Nico was still a Greek, he didn't really belong in camp and nobody would start a war over him_) she still couldn't believe that the boy who hated her had taken the dagger.

She took a deep breath and pushed the guilt down. It could wait. For now, she had to be strong.

When she shifted her gaze, she saw Octavian's corpse lying on the ground, staring blankly into her eyes. From out his stomach spilled the same blood that was on his hands. She felt a grim satisfaction.

It wasn't until she looked up to the picture of her boyfriend holding a bloodied sword that she felt sick.

**ix. The Fear**

He had known it was a stupid plan from the beginning. But he decided that he was a good Roman soldier, and therefore the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. That Greacus scum couldn't be trusted, period. If there had to be a war to make people see it, well, so be it.

He would do whatever it took to become the Messias.

Annabeth had been his target, because he knew she was his most dangerous enemy. From the short while that he had seen her he had managed to figure out that she was the smartest, the strategist, and that most of the Greaculi were useless without her. Including her boyfriend, Percy Jackson.

If he took her down, the camp would not only show their true colors, but also fall apart into an unorganized mess. Which was an advantage to them Romans, because they were _never_ unorganized. They would defeat them in no time.

Of course, there had been the execution of the plan, which was far from perfect.

He knew how much could go wrong with just throwing a dagger, but he had to do it fast and smooth, not waiting until the camps had become buddy-buddy. He couldn't poison her, because he knew she would've been too smart to accept a drink from him, and the wind spirits guarded their food like nobody's business. Ambushing was even more risky, because it relied too much on timing and luck.

Naturally, this also relied on timing and luck, but a lot less.

When he had a free shot, he took it.

The dagger flew straight at her back.

And missed.

The Greacus Son of Pluto had jumped between his target and the dagger, successfully claiming it for himself.

That's when the fear kicked in.

In his original plan, chaos had been the main theme. After Annabeth died, the camp was supposed to be in shatters, and her boyfriend should've been too desperate and pained to move. He wouldn't have been their first priority.

Now that he had killed an outcast, people would be a lot more levelheaded.

He looked into the eyes of his supposed-to-be victim and shuddered. He knew what was coming.

It still came as a surprise that it was Percy I-Warned-The-Enemy-Before-I-Blew-Up-The-Ship Jackson who was wielding the sword.

The last words he heard were: 'Don't fuck with my friends. Ever.'

His last words were: 'Pluto, please, mercy.'

**x. The Snap**

It took a few seconds to process that _Octavian had killed Nico. He had tried to kill Annabeth_.

After that, it only took a moment to snap.

He had known for a long time that he wasn't as innocent as everybody seemed to think he was. Granted, he refused to kill during the Second Titan war, but that was different. The demigods fighting for the other side had an actual point with their wishes, and were misleaded by Kronos. They didn't know what they were doing.

Octavian, on the other hand...

He had first felt the urge to kill when he found out that Gabe had hit his mom. Nobody hurts his mom. Nobody.

But at the same time, he also hadn't wanted to take away his mother's change for revenge, so he let it go.

In the years after that, there mercifully hadn't been an occasion in which his friends were deliberately hurt. There was the occasional monster (which he killed) but other than that? Not so much.

That was, until Tartarus came.

Akhlys hurt Annabeth.

And so he hurt Akhlys.

At that moment, a crystal ball had shattered in his chest. At the time, he hadn't known what it was.

Now he did.

It was his mercy.

_Octavian had killed Nico._

Within a second, he had drawn his sword and pushed it through Octavian's back.

'Don't fuck with my friends. Ever.'

_Especially if that friend is like a little brother._

'Pluto, please, mercy.'

With that, the murderer fell to the ground. Dead.

Blood dripped from Riptide.

Even Annabeth's horror filled eyes couldn't stop him from smiling.


End file.
